Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we give our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems.)
Everything about La Pasadita Inn seems big: the flavors, the volume of food they serve, and even the stature of the lone server who’s been taking orders there for years, his mustachioed stoicism weirdly comforting in its consistency.
But the footprint is, as fans of the know, pretty small. The restaurant sits on a unique, triangular island in a caramel-brick building studded with glass-block windows roughly at the confluence of the Uptown, Five Points, and Curtis Park neighborhoods. It’s flanked by high-rise condos and devoid of obvious parking.
The homemade, humbly plated dishes and combos — hard-shell tacos, fajitas, chile rellenos, all-day huevos, enchiladas, and green chile (over everything) — are the gold standard for comforting Colo-Mex. My brother-in-law used to snowshoe there for chips and salsa back when it used to snow heavily in downtown Denver. Diners can watch the staff make the food in the open kitchen, and easily pick up $100-plus carryout orders within 20 minutes or so (trust me).
Why wouldn’t you go there?
Over the years, La Pasadita has become even more important to the city as fellow mom-and-pop Colorado-style Mexican food restaurants such as Benny’s and, even further back, Jack-n-Grill have closed. All praise to La Pasadita founder and Durango, Mexico, native Jose Luis Guereca, who opened it as a family operation in 1995 (though not at its current location, which was formerly occupied by Betty’s Take-Out).
Order a full meal or just sip drinks and nosh on the onion-forward, slightly spicy salsa and fresh chips, or leisurely sop up green chile with pillowy tortillas and bask in the tomatillo fiesta. It’s the ideal spot for meeting a friend after work for a cold beer or margarita, but it can also fill up quickly. (The shaded patio and relatively cozy dining room occasionally demand your patience.)
La Pasadita serves a guacamole plate that absolutely sings, with flaky, triangular flour chips and an addictive recipe that I would like to steal but could surely never replicate. This is, I kid you not, a monumental guac that you should always order regardless of what else you get.
Formerly unthinkable restaurant closures feel more common these days due to the combined headwinds facing the dining scene. That La Pasadita even still exists is something to cheer, but the emphasis on fresh, crunchy, spicy, toothsome dishes helps demystify that a bit. They’ve earned it, many times over.
La Pasadita Inn is located at 1959 Park Avenue West, Unit A, in Denver. Most dishes are in the $10-$20 range. Open 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday, and closed on Sundays. There’s no website, but call 303-832-1785 for more.
